


The first Dora Milaje (or That time Imani almost fought a goddess)

by rebornlover



Series: Stories of the Dora Milaje [2]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Black Panther (Comics)
Genre: Dora Milaje origin story, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:05:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9314774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebornlover/pseuds/rebornlover
Summary: Who were the People? Her parents would scoff at this question, to them the line between the People and others was as strong as vibranium. The People were them and their ancestors, the worshippers of the Panther goddess. The People were the blessed ones, the guardians of the mineral that had fallen to the earth from the heavens. The People were Wakanda. And that last part was where it started to get complicated. Was every person in Wakanda a part of the People?Alternatively: Imani always knew no good could come out of speaking to the gods directly, that was a story in which the writer always dies.





	1. Nia accidentally makes a face at the King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have changed Amali's name to Nia for easier reading. Other than that no other major changes have been made to the earlier chapters.

There was a cacophony in the council room. It was the middle of the night and all the councillors, the King especially, would have loved to be in their beds. The subject of their meeting could not wait. Only last week there had been another attack. The woman who had been targeted was fine apart from some minor damages to the clothes that had marked her for the attack in the first place. Still, this was the fifth attack in as many months and the situation, which most of them had hoped was going to get better, was slowly getting worse.

Nia stood in the corner of the council room. Visible and yet unseen, moving only to refill the jugs on the table in front of her. She did not remember being given a name for who had called this meeting when she had been pulled out of her bed by the Head Steward.

There was a sudden crack, loud as thunder. Nia’s head popped up from where she had been examining her sandals. The king’s hand was curled into a fist, running from its point of contact on the table was a large spider web of cracks. Nia winced, her cousin was one of the palace’s carpenters and he often complained to her about the damage done to the furniture when the King felt he needed to capture the attention of the council.

Despite her cousin’s complaints, it was an effective technique, to a person the council was silent. Those who had been standing when the King moved had since retaken their seats. Every eye in the room, including those of the guards and Nia, was on him.

‘In the time you have spent over this petty argument, we would have been finished with the issue and in our beds!’ His voice was pleasant to the ear, slightly rough but deep and rumbling.

‘My King, su-,’ the councillor who had spoken quieted as the King turned to look at him. If Nia was not mistaken, he was the councillor who had raised the issue of the Prince’s marriage in the first place. From the look in his eyes, Nia was sure the King remembered this as well. 

The King glanced around the room, daring anyone else to try and raise the subject again but even in their sleepy and bad-tempered moods, the council was aware that this was a horrible idea. Nia watched as one of the women on the council, the Head of the Metalsmith Guild if she was not mistaken, inched her finger under her head wrap to scratch the edge of her hair and then repositioned it carefully.

‘The matter of my son’s marriage will be settled later, the **reason** ,’ his voice strained out the word, ‘that we are here tonight is to discuss what can be done about easing the assimilation of the members of the Lion and Crocodile cults’ into the People.’

Nia blamed her mother for what happened then. She hadn’t meant to do it. Her mother was the person in their family with opinions and though Nia had happened to agree with this one she could not imagine that the royal family or anyone on the council felt it was the place of a serving girl to have opinions on matters of state. Still at the word ‘assimilation’ she had winced. None of the council members noticed, she was at the opposite end of the giant room for the king and she suspected that even if she had been standing in front of say the Palace Historian and dancing naked, it would not have been enough for him to acknowledge anything but her inquiry about whether he needed his glass filled.

The King, on the other hand, was a completely different story, maybe being the eyes of the goddess Bast on earth made it difficult for him to miss anything that happened. And he was looking straight at her too.

She held her breath, waiting to see if he would acknowledge what he had seen but instead he reminded the council about the incident that had happened last week.

Nia had already heard the matter discussed exhaustively by friends and family both of course, though as far as she knew none of them had a familial connection to the woman. It was just common sense to keep track of the areas where things like this could happen to people like them.

She released the breath she had been holding and went to go refill the glass of the General.


	2. Imani considers the question of the People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imani considers the consequences of expanding an empire and the girl she likes.

There was unrest among the People.   

Imani paused and considered. Who were the People? Her parents would scoff at this question, to them the line between the People and others was as strong as vibranium. The People were them and their ancestors, the worshippers of the Panther god. The People were the blessed ones, the guardians of the mineral that had fallen to the earth from the heavens. The People were Wakanda.

And that last part was where it started to get complicated. Was every person in Wakanda a part of the People? Were the worshippers of the Rhino god, the Metalsmiths who had learned to shape the vibranium under their feet until it could be worn by their King, a part of the People? And what of the warriors of the White Gorilla cult? As the borders of their nation expanded, and treaties and alliances became more concrete, and members from both sides began to move permanently from their traditional territories the nature of Wakanda was beginning to change. And while some of the People were fine with this, were celebratory of the changes that would come from this development; Imani couldn’t help but feel that the snake in front of them was not the only one in the forest around them. They could see this snake; they might even be able to tame it but there was the constant hanging possibility of another sneaking up on them from the shadows while their attention was turned.

She sighed as she pushed away her journal. Writing prose was more difficult than she had thought. She stretched, the cotton of her shirt feeling soft and warm as the hem brushed against her stomach. She would go visit Amazi, that never failed to put her into the mindset needed to write a poem. Maybe someday her poems would be about something other than the light that shone on Amazi’s dark brown skin as she flowed through the movements in her sets. Or the way that her arms looked covered in the red dust of the practice ground as she sat in the gardens of her mother and gazed up at the stars.

Her writing about Amazi wasn’t profound or world-changing but it was honest and genuine and at the very least Zubezi liked it. The heir apparent to the throne had always been something of a hopeless romantic though.

 

* * *

 

Imani lived in a small hut on the edge of her parent’s compound, which in turn lay with reasonable distance from the training grounds on one side and the grazing fields on the other. Her mother had inherited the land and the cattle that grazed on it from her father as both the eldest of his children and the only one that had any kind of interest in keeping cattle.

In the centre of the compound was the hut where she and her siblings had grown up with their parents. When her sister inherited the title of matriarch she would live in that house with her own family. In the meantime, she lived in the hut next to Imani’s with her wife Amala. The rest of the huts had been emptied since the last of their extended family had made the move to the new city. For a while, while she had attended her university studies, her hut had stood empty as well. It was becoming more and more common to see smaller families and familial units both here in the village and in the cities as well. At the very least it meant that more of the children from the poorer local families were being brought into to help during the year, one day they might even do as the Crocodile did and integrate the most important and trusted workers into their families. It was interesting to think about.

She stood stretching her arms up again and then picked her writing book up from the pillowed seat beside her netted window, she moved from her sleeping room out towards the area where she received guests, treading lightly in her house slippers. She passed by the stools and the mats in the corner that she has received from her grandmother but not decided where to place yet. The final room taking up a full half of the hut was her cooking area, she checked the fire to make sure there were no sparks and then the jugs around her to make sure she had enough water to make herself dinner later and then paused at the door as she stepped out of her house slippers and into her outside slippers. She turned to go and then turned back quickly and reached into the house pulling her pouch from its designated hook and pulling the netting down from where it was pinned to the inside wall of the hut. Double checking that she had remembered everything she turned to go.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No really there's more coming


	3. Azazi very nearly kills the crown prince

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zubezi almost dies and then has to deal with a goddess creepily taking over his friend

Amazi was a big person. The people of the lion clan generally were but even by their standards, she was big. Her arms and legs were thick with muscle and her stomach was firm if round.  Both of her parents had been wrestlers, famous in every village up to the current border of Wakanda and further. As a young child they had often play wrestled with her, but even at their gentlest, they hadn’t been able to demonstrate most of the moves that had made them so effective in the courtyard until she had been about 12. She was now 25 and considering all this it was no wonder that even slightly distracted as she was, Zubezi had not had the upper hand in this fight for the last 10 minutes.

The prince, who was having slight difficulties breathing because she had about a 20 count ago wrapped both of her expansive thighs around his neck and was, even now, firmly holding down the lower part of his body with most hers, was starting to think giving up might be a good idea. Amazi could probably hold this position for a good ten to fifteen minutes after he lost consciousness and he wasn’t sure given her current distraction that she would notice he had passed out before that became a danger.

He was, pleasantly, surprised when she released him before he had to put too much thought into getting her attention. Taking the opportunity to take a deep breath he turned to look at her. She had stood up as soon as she let him go and was now staring intently at the air a while away from them. As far as he could tell there was nothing there, but it wasn’t unheard of for this to happen to members of the Lion cult, especially those members as devout as Amazi. The great goddess Bast preferred to present herself only to the royal family and her priests but the Lion gods were said to present themselves to the most convenient possible follower. He sat up and went to go grab a glass of water.

He began to feel slight concern when after several gulps of water, she had failed to so much as shift her legs, Amazi when not in the ring was something of a nervous fidget-er. Somehow when he had imagined communication with the gods he had not expected it to be so eerily quiet. He wasn’t sure what whatever higher being was talking to Amazi could be taking so long to communicate. He had only seen his father in conversation with Bast once and it had been a very short-lived affair. The goddess Bast preferred, in his father’s words, to let the silly humans learn from their own mistakes as was the right of all her children. He moved to retrieve the weather cover from where it was kept folded in a stone chest by the edge of the courtyard.  Like the courtyard it was eight-sided, each corner had a hook that could be attached to the corresponding hook on the posts at each corner of the yard. Working carefully (and attempting as much as possible to prevent the cover from hitting or nudging his friend) Zubezi set up the cover so that his friend would at least not suffer from sun sickness.

It was as he finished hooking up the last ring that Imani climbed the last of the stair to join them. He moved to greet her and then stopped as Amazi span her head around to watch her. Moving carefully around the edge of the courtyard until he could keep both in his sights, he turned his head to see Amazi’s face more properly. Imani had frozen in place as soon as Amazi had turned to look at her and he could understand why. There was something inhuman about Amazi’s gaze, not cruel but disinterested somehow as if they were ants looking up at a human that had noticed they were doing something vaguely interesting. It wasn’t often that Zubezi was so completely ignored by other people, but he couldn’t exactly say he minded.

 

* * *

 

Imani’s legs were starting to hurt. Quite apart from the long walk up to Zubezi’s preferred training ground, she had been standing in place for 10 minutes now. The thing that was currently wearing Amazi’s face had not once blinked. It was eerie, looking into a face she knew so well and yet seeing nothing familiar. Despite her ferocity in battle, Amazi had always had what Zubezi liked to, teasingly, refer to as the face of a well-fed child. Her cheeks were soft and her lips plump. It made it hard for her to present the kind of ferocious glare that the wrestlers liked to use to freak each other out before a big match. Somehow whatever this thing was, its very presence in Amazi seemed to negate that softness as if it had imposed another image (a fierce face, mouth lined with fangs covered in blood) on top of her Amazi’s. Finally, the being broke the silence.

‘Ah,’ Imani thought as for the first and, she hoped, the last time she was spoken to by a god. ‘I was right about those snakes then, huh?’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews would be appreciated if you've held out this far. Also in case you're wondering I have absolutely no experience wrestling


	4. Nia is 'granted' an audience with the King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nia contemplates cultural exchange and the possibility of telepathy. The King is, very slightly, amused.

Nia was going to die. She could feel his gaze on her even as she moved around the room clearing. The other councillors had left already. Eager, no doubt, to rest up for another day of screaming their heads off at each other.

‘Oh gods,’ she thought panicked keeping her eyes everywhere but his face, even as she drew closer to him in her journey around the long table. ‘Why is he just sitting there, looking at me?’ What if the stories her grandparents told were true, what if he could truly read the minds of those around him? Her breathing picked up slightly as she considered this horrifying possibility. So great was her dismay that as she reached for the next bowl (almost half full of uneaten mutogo, her grandmother would have shaken her head at this blatant wastefulness) she paused. She felt the gaze on her shift slightly and hurriedly resumed her task. As she reached his seat, the stack of bowls on her one hand slightly unsteady from the shaking in the rest of her body he spoke to her for the first time.

‘You are not going to die.’ His tone was measured and even. Meant, she considered, to be reassuring and comforting. His words caused the exact opposite effect. She tried very hard to not look like her heart was not, even now, trying to claw its way slowly up her throat so it could choke her itself. It was true then, he was capable of reading minds. This was horrible, she had thought so many impertinent, treasonous thoughts in this room during those gods forsaken meetings. Not about the king, he tried his best truly, even for her people. Was it truly his fault having been brought up in the People that he sometimes failed to consider why ‘assimilation’ may not appeal to the people who were to be assimilated? But the councillors? Those hopped up peacocks so full of themselves they would never even deign to notice a serving girl from the Crocodile clan until she was pressing their expensive wines into their hands? This was not good.

‘If it will help keep you breathing it might be helpful to mention at this juncture that despite the many rumours, I cannot read minds.’ This time it was the slight amusement in his tone that caught her attention. 

She took the risk of glancing up at him and to be sure there was a slight sparkle in his eyes. Even with the grey hair starting to spread from the beginning of his temple towards the centre of his hair, she could see why so many of the older women even from her own people considered him so handsome. He wasn’t smiling at her exactly, but she could tell from the slight wrinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes and the small tilt of his mouth that it would completely transform his face from that of the stern commander she was so used to seeing.

Somehow looking at him helped to calm her.  She took a deep breath, held it and then let it out. ‘How may I help you, your majesty?’

He watched her for a moment more, checking that she would not spiral back into her panic. ‘I wanted to discuss your reaction to my statement earlier.’ She winced again, she had been hoping that it would not be that. He continued talking, ‘I am not angry, every one of the People is entitled to hold and share their own opinions, though of course, some have greater merit than others.’

‘I am truly sorry your Majesty, I swear to you. I am so very grateful for the opportunities I have been afforded.’

‘I am very pleased to hear that, it is always gratifying to hear that from my servants,’ he stopped suddenly. She knew even before she said anything that her face had done it again. It wasn’t even that she had any particular thoughts of _any_ sort about her position. It was just-

‘What is wrong?’ His voice was very gentle, and his eyes were very warm.

She watched him for a moment, thinking back over the months that she had worked at the palace and trying to remember every interaction she had ever witnessed between him and other members of the clan. She took a deep breath and made the decision to trust him. He was her king now, after all, it would be best to discover if the care he extended to the People was also something offered to the Clan.

‘The word ‘servant’ in your language,’ she spoke very softly, thinking of each word before she let it out and arranging them carefully in the space around them, ‘it is almost exactly the same as the word ‘prisoner’ in my own.’

There was a heavy silence for a moment as the King contemplated this, for a moment she felt she could actually see the connections being made in his head. She could see him remembering consciously that she was from the Clan and the history that tied them together stretching back hundreds of years over land disputes and skirmishes. His head tilted slightly as he considered that it may not have been a simple coincidence that a word had come to mean two different things between two clans that had clashed as theirs had.

‘Ah.’

‘Of course, I know that is not your meaning your majesty,’ she added quickly. ‘Most of the time I wouldn’t have reacted like that or to your comment from earlier. It is just that my mother has very strong opinions and after the attack on the Mama from the Lion clan she was particularly strident.’

He seemed to think this over. For a moment she feared that he would ask her to expand on the opinions of her mother but, presently, the crown prince burst into the room.

‘Father,’ he panted heavily from where he was holding himself up against the wall, ‘You must hear this, Amazi has been taken over by a Lion-god. She brings news of treachery.’

This announcement was soon followed by steps coming briskly down the hall. Presently they were joined by two women. One of them was marked as a member of the Panther clan by the intricate patterns in her braided hair, though her short stature and stoutness marked her even from afar as the Prince’s friend Imani. Her large companion was Amazi from the Lion Clan. Nia had been to one or two of her matches and had admired the strength in her arms as she had picked up a smaller woman and literally thrown her out of the ring. According to her brother, what Amazi had in strength she also doubled in ingenuity and there was a lot of hope for her future career. As she turned her face from the monstrous visage that was now Amazi’s face she silently noted that for all her brother’s complaints about Amazi’s soft face she was terrifying to look at now.

As the king stood to confront this god, she bowed deeply and started to edge around the corners of the room to reach the door. She opened the door and then froze as behind her, a voice like the thunder sounded behind her.

‘Do not go far, young girl. All must play their part if we are to preserve the precious ‘People.’


	5. Interlude: Amazi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amazi feels a creeping sense of unease

Amazi was having a very odd sort of day. From the moment that she had woken up that morning she had felt as if she was being watched. It was a sensation she usually enjoyed, whether it was the knowledge of Imani’s attentive gaze upon her as she did her exercises, or the breathless excitement of the crowd’s focus during a match. This day, however, the feeling made her feel ill at ease. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t see anyone watching her (and she had certainly checked her home very thoroughly) but that the feeling of the gaze reminded her of meeting The Gorilla of Nikanda when she was younger.

The meeting had come after a match between her parents and the Gorilla and his partner. It was the only time she had ever remembered her parents being beaten, and her father had never been quite able to move his hand in the same way after that match. As she had sat by her parents on the bench at the side of the courtyard, carefully wrapping her mother’s head- she had sustained a cut after being thrown particularly hard, the two men had come to stand imposingly before her parents. Her parents had stood up despite the exhaustion to show respect to their opponents, and then her father had picked her up and held her up so that she could greet their opponents and they could introduce her as their successor. She had felt real fear for the first time in her life, holding the gaze of that man. She had never before, and would never again, feel so insignificant in the eyes of another person. She had trained all her life to avoid that feeling of powerlessness.

She had done her stretches, eaten her breakfast and then set off to the courtyard for her morning training. Everything had been going well, though as the morning wore on the feeling had gotten increasingly worse. By the time she had met with Zubezi for their semi-weekly training session it had felt like she was walking through one of the training rooms at her village before one of her matches. Her unseen enemy, whoever or whatever they were, had succeeded at putting her on edge like nothing else. When she had caught sight of the woman watching her and Zubezi from across the ring during their practice match, it had been something of a relief. The woman was as large as her mother had been (a very large and robust woman even by the standards of the Lion clan, her mother had been able to hold small goats in the crook of one arm and had been one inch larger than her father besides that). Her hair was pulled back from her face so that it formed a large halo around her face. Amazi had not been able to see her face but she was still sure in her bones that this woman was her silent watcher.

As she had stood to confront the woman, she had felt the world shift slightly around her and very suddenly the woman had gone from across the courtyard to standing uncomfortably close to her. Her height meant that this close Amazi was staring right at her nose, which was wide and flat and set rather low on her face. Her chin was rounded and suited her soft face rather nicely. Her eyes were angular and narrow, but the amber quality to them was striking in its intensity. Amazi had never seen a color like that in her life, but something in her recognized it. It was like returning to a home you had left as a baby and recognizing the rooms by the way they felt as you walked through them. Every child of the Lion clan had been told stories about those eyes from their time in the womb, but somehow Amazi felt that even if as a baby she had been removed from her home and taken to live in another kingdom, had never heard tale or rumor of the boundless gifts that were given unto her people, **_somehow,_** she would have still been able to recognize the goddess Nami.


	6. The politics of an empire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imani and Nia have a conversation, it does not go well.

The poet-to-be was silent as the three women made their journey to the East. Nia was anxious about the events of the past week and she wished that the woman would speak so that she could talk about her worries with _someone_ , but she could understand that the woman was upset about the current state of her lover. As friends and companions of the Crown Prince, Nia was used to watching the two women as they moved freely about the castle. She had once caught them in a corner of the castle, their heads bent close together in intimate conversation. The wrestler was not a particularly talkative person, but it was still very odd to endure this constant silence as they moved forwards ceaselessly. Her legs burned under her, her mouth and stomach ached, but Amazi was still going strong and she knew that if she fell behind she would be hopelessly lost. They had passed out of the last village in this part of the Kingdom when the sun had been at its highest point in the sky and had not seen hide nor hair of another person since then.

She glanced again at Amazi before moving closer to Imani and offering her a bit of water from her flask. Imani refused, they were travelling light so that they could reach their destination faster, but she had carried her own water and was taking measured sips of it every few hours. Unlike Nia she seemed to have at least some idea of where they were headed, or at least that was what Nia had assumed based off the long groan she had let out when the Lion goddess had mentioned their destination to the king.

The roads here were well-maintained, routes established by traders from the other clans early on and traversed regularly since. Nia would have usually been concerned about travelling without at least one or two men present, but Amazi was tall and solid enough to give match to any man outside of the Lion clan and besides as her mother had said, ‘Those who walk in the path of the gods will be protected always from their enemies,’ and while this was rather more literal than her mother had intended she was rather reassured.

Presently Amazi came to a stop in front of them. Imani moved to her side and glanced around, hands dropping to the daggers she kept secured to her waist belt. Without turning to address either of them Amazi instructed them to take rest and nourishment before they undertook the rest of the day’s journey. Having said this, she pointed them towards a shaded spot not far off the path, took their bottles in her hand and took off further into the woods. For a few seconds it seemed that Imani would follow her but instead for the first time she turned to Imani and looked her over.

‘You know, I never imagined I would talk to a goddess, if you can really describe what happened earlier as **_talking_** ,’ she sat down facing the direction her companion had gone in, face unreadable.

Relieved at this vine, Nia nodded her head, reaching into the pack for her packed rations and sinking down to face her.

‘The Crocodile god does not interfere with his people much while we are on land,’ she offered. ‘Especially not since we were conquered by the Panther Clan’

Imani glanced at her then, looking for the ankle bracelets of shell that marked out her family’s occupation and status. It was a gesture that Imani often got from other Crocodile clan members while she was walking through her area of the city, but it was very odd coming from the future Royal poet of the People. Whatever knowledge she gained from her search she chose to keep to herself, instead beginning to eat the food from her own pack. Nia wondered, but she kept her questions to herself.

‘Have you heard about the attack on that Mama from the Lion clan last week?’

The question startled Nia who had been slowly sorting out the ground nuts in her portion from the pepper corns. While she had no real problem with either, she preferred to eat them separately. She thought quickly about her answer. The question was insincere in some ways, everyone in the Palace was talking about the attacks and Imani had to be aware of the past attacks of a similar nature on members of the Crocodile clan. The violence may have found a new target, but its very existence was a warning sign to her family, regardless of what her Uncle Boba said.

Imani took her silence as confirmation, which was another sign that she had already known the answer.

‘It’s a sign, a portent of things to come.’

Nia considered this.

‘So the goddess said there will be other attacks?’

‘There will be a coup.’

Imani spoke calmly and quietly, her eyes never leaving the path Amazi had ventured down, as if she had not just torn the foundation from under Nia’s feet.

‘A coup! She said this?!’

‘No,’ Imani conceded. ‘But someone prominent is stirring up trouble, it is only a matter of time’

‘Surely you are seeing ghosts in the night. The attacks are on members of the conquered tribes…’

‘And a clear sign of discontent. Consider, are they still continuing despite or **_because of_** the King’s repeated warnings? The People are restless, the attacks are a symptom of a larger disease’

‘There hadn’t been a reported attack in months’

‘No, there hadn’t been had there? Which is _very_ odd considering that a young man from your neighborhood was jumped last week.’

Nia was quiet, her lips drawn together. Imani had stated this with such a matter-of-fact tone that she knew there was no use in protesting knowledge. More than that though, the words had stirred a fury in the pit of her stomach. It was one thing to think that the nobility was simply unaware of that attacks, cowed as the young men were into silence; it was another thing entirely to contemplate that they saw the attacks as incidental, brushed off to focus on a ‘larger problem’ while boys like her brother were enduring abuse and punishment. She had often heard the political maneuvering of the Council and the rest of the nobility while she was serving drinks at royal banquets and she was uninterested in being drawn into a conversational trap when she was already uncomfortable, scared and furious.

Imani sighed heavily and turned to face her, finally, her voice softening. ‘I’m sorry, sometimes I forget that not everyone I talk to finds their entertainment in political word-games’

‘These attacks aren’t political to me, those boys are refusing to report those attacks because they think that nothing will be done, and apparently they’re **correct**.’

Imani raised her eyebrows in interest and Nia cursed herself. Her big mouth was going to get her killed. She didn’t even understand why she was out here in the middle of the woods with these two.

Imani considered this and then turned to pack away the last of her rations, brushing ground nut skins off her legs as she stood and stretched. She fidgeted slightly thrown off for a moment, before she turned to follow her lover down the path. As she reached the edge of the tree line she turned back to Nia, opened her mouth as if to say something, hesitated and kept moving forwards.

Nia looked after her, wiping roughly at the tears that had sprung up in the corners of her eyes. She nodded silently, and turned back to her food.


	7. Interlude: The Lovers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amazi and Imani sit down and talk to each other

‘Why won’t you talk to me?’

Amazi was crouched at a stream not far from where she had left them, she had filled the canteens already and she was now sitting with her hand dipped in the stream. She didn’t look up as Imani moved to stand behind her, but she also didn’t flinch from the hands Imani lay on her shoulders, so Imani pulled her into a light embrace. They sat there for a minute, Amazi sitting cross-legged letting the water run over her fingers and Imani knelt behind her, holding her gently, her front pressed along her lover’s back. Finally, Amazi reached up and gently removed her arms, keeping her partner’s smaller hands in hers as she turned to face her.

‘I’m scared.’ It was a simple statement. Imani let it hang in the air, waiting for more.

‘I’m **_terrified,_** actually. Do you remember that story I told you when you were teasing me about how much time I spend on the training grounds- No, I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but you remember?’

Imani nodded seriously, keeping her protestations at the back of her throat, though they burned there slightly.

‘You remember how scared I was of that wrestler? Well acting as a conduit for goddess was much, much scarier.’

‘Did she threaten you?’ Imani didn’t know why she asked, there wasn’t much she could do to a goddess.

‘She didn’t have to, it was the very nature of her mind. It was alien and unconcerned, she has no worries about food, or wealth or love, she doesn’t even really worry about survival. She is ancient and to her we are but passing ants, biting at her feet and offering her crumbs from her own table. The only thing she cares to think or worry about is the other gods.’

‘Until now,’ Imani said slowly ‘So why? What has grabbed their attention so?’

‘Something is coming, and as much as they leave us to fight our own wars the consequences are too dire to leave solely in our hands. So, they are preparing.’

‘So, there is a coup?’ Imani said, thinking of the conversation she had just had with Nia

‘If there is, then it is completely incidental to their plans. I don’t remember a lot of the details but by the time the preparations have been put in place and the plans have come to fruition, you and I, my love will have taken permanent sleep next to each other, and our children beside us, and their children and so on.’

Imani visibly struggled with this news. She gripped Amazi’s hands tightly in her own.

‘Well, then.’ She moved her hands to the sides of Imani’s face and held her gently, lovingly. ‘I suppose it’s a good thing we were planning to spend the rest of our lives together anyway.

Amazi smiled slightly at this and nodded before tipping forward slowly and carefully until their foreheads were pressed together. They stayed this way for another three minutes and then Amazi got up pulling her love with her.

‘Come on, we’ve both been horribly unkind to our travelling companion.’

‘You just needed some time to think.’

‘I was actually talking about when I left her to your untactful tongue.’

‘Hey!’


	8. The End of The First Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imani would like to lodge a complaint about the amount of goddesses she has been forced to speak to.

It took 3 days trek for them to reach the temple. It was so far to the West of their lands that they were only a day or so from the Nikandan border. It made Imani antsy to be so close to the border, having grown up ensconced in the bosom of the kingdom.

Amazi was a mixture of excited and melancholy, this was the main territory of her tribe before they were folded into the People, the small settlement they had slept in the night before was owned by members of her clan who were related to her in some vague sense that spanned back several generations through her great-grandmother’s family. For now, they were trying to avoid larger villages and settlements, but the people living here were the only ones who had known how to find the temple. For generations high-priestesses had been trained and lived in that settlement, sending minor priestesses and runners out when they needed to send messages to other members of the Lion Clan. Her parents had grown up after the clan had been conquered and had moved to the capital city years before she was born so she had never been this far into the ancestral lands. It was an experience.

Nia was kind of just hoping whatever they were doing wouldn’t require a physical sacrifice or one of those odd rituals her grandmother had told her about that required nudity and blood.

 The entrance to the temple was well hidden in the rockface of a hill. An old man, bent over double with age and exhaustion, led them to a small opening in the cliff face that seemed at first glance like nothing more than a crack in the stone, maybe two arm’s lengths deep for someone Amazi’s size, though wide enough to accommodate even someone wider than her. Once they entered it, having to move slowly to accommodate the man’s pace, they realized that once you had reached where you assumed an end would be it continued for quite some time. Finally, after walking for about an hour, the man stopped and moved to the side where he did something in the dark. A torch flashed in the darkness, illuminating the space. This part of the cave had been deliberately built. It was cavernous, the floor they were standing on had been covered into a repeating square pattern. The steps a few lengths in front of them led to a large hexagonal space two times as big as the training courtyard, surrounded on each corner by large pillars that led up to the sloping ceiling. At the far end of the space statues of three lionesses lay next to and on top of each other and a figure that Amazi recognized was carved into the stone wall behind them, the stone figure’s arms were held above the heads of the lionesses resting at her feet, as though she was bestowing a blessing.

As they stepped towards the statues in the dim lighting the women were surprised when, with a cracking like thunder, the lamps on all the pillars whirled to life. Blinking slightly in this new light they were surprised to hear a voice behind them.

‘You have passed the first test well, young ones, there will be plenty more.’

All three of them whirled around at the first word, Amazi and Imani sliding quickly into fighting stances. Behind them were two women, both tall though the one on the left, like her statue was also stout and muscular besides. Unlike the Lion clan, the Panther clan only ever told stories of the goddess appearing in her animal form. Still, Imani was certain in her bones who this new goddess was. Moving quickly, she dropped onto her knees and then, as if she was greeting her grandparents or one of the elder council people she touched her forehead to each back of the hand briefly where they held her up.

‘You were always a bright one Imani.’ The voice was terrible. It sent shivers running down all three of their sides, even as Mali and Amazi moved to pay their own respects. Their teeth clenched tightly, and their ears rang like they had been standing in a tin house when thunder struck overhead. That voice was _**Danger.**_  It was power, cruel and uncaring.


	9. The Edict of the Goddesses

You are the first steps in the safeguarding of the People. You, daughters, and the ones that come after must be prepared to give your lives not only for the King and the Royal Family but for the very nation of Wakanda. All your loved ones, your enemies, your lovers and schoolyard bullies. You will be responsible for safeguarding their futures in your hands.  And when we are finished here, one of the girls here with our blessing will marry the king.

Child, you had better put that face away. You and Amazi will have different roles to play in this plan but do not mistake me when I say that your mortal concerns and worries are to me as water under the bridge. You would eventually forget disappointment if I said you should. No, **_you_** my dear will be our griot and our spymaster. The women we will bring here must learn to pass through both the court and general society with ease and confidence. Unnoticed but watchful, confident and at ease. You will show them this and you will also be the first history-keeper of the Blessed Ones.

Amazi, **_you_** will teach these girls how to hold their own. When enemies come knocking out our gates, and when we find treachery within them, the women of the People will act to safeguard their people with the same fierceness with which you would safeguard your lover. They will be symbols of justice, and when the weak and the cowardly and the evil believe that they can harm us, they will beat it back with the same fierceness that carried your parents through their wrestling matches and carried your grandmother seven months pregnant to the Golden city to secure a better future for her lineage.

Nia, you have been chosen as the first of the Blessed Ones to receive training in this place but you will not be the last. In your heart you yearn for justice, you have witnessed suffering and heartache and they have hardened you against the sight of injustice. Let that strength carry you in this, for it is through this endeavour that you will improve the lot for _your_ people and, eventually, **The People**. You have watched the silence of those in power and the consequences that reap for the weak and vulnerable, and so I charge you today: make sure that this silence ends today. As long as there are women being trained under our banner to make sure that there is never again silence while injustice rains down but rather the screaming of fury and righteousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much

**Author's Note:**

> This is the longest thing I've ever published and its not even finished yet.


End file.
